The really terrible thing about the swine flu outbreak in Mexico is when it inevitably blows through the Mexicali border, it'll give the hardcore anti-immigrant right-wingers an excuse to mobilize and possibly even form active anti-immigrant militias.

It is currently autumn in the northern hemisphere which includes Mexico. The next three to six months are the peak period for influenza of all kinds and is therefore the worst possibly tiem for the emergence of a new strain as it will have months to spread under ideal conditions.

Had the outbreak occurred at this time of year in a southern hemisphere country such as Brazil it would be somewhat less worrying.

I live in the northern hemisphere. IT IS NOT AUTUMN HERE IT IS SPRING THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF WINTER I AM WILLING TO KILL OVER IT.

But the fact that this strain has already spread to NYC is worrying. That means it's been active for significantly longer than the authorities have been aware of it. My roommate had a similar strain in the '70s, when he was young and in excellent physical condition. It hospitalized him for two weeks.

We'll probably get a better idea of the mortality rate now that the flu appears to be spreading in the US - many people in Mexico probably never bothered to go to the doctor for what seemed like an ordinary case of the flu.

There's also this slightly encouraging bit from MM's link:

So far, there have been no deaths from swine flu in the United States, and only one of the people who tested positive for the disease has been hospitalized, officials said. Even though most of the cases have been mild, officials said they expect reports of more severe infections, and said the government had declared a public health emergency over swine flu.

I've just been reading around on my various social networks, and so far I have to say I kind of find the various sarcastic and cynical responses to the current flu outbreak to be pretty ...offensive? ridiculous? Western-centric?Basically, I see a lot of Americans chuckling and saying, "Heh, OK, whatever - SARS didn't get me, and this won't either, la la!"

The SARS outbreaks in Asia were contained at the cost of a lot of really drastic public-health measures, including basically changing the entire subsistence culture of many poor urban-dwellers by killing every single avian life-form within the reach of the major urban centers. Do we have any Chinese, Hong Kong, Thai or other Asian members who'd like to speak to this in more direct terms and tell your stories? Because I keep seeing references to people wearing surgical masks and urban centers taking precautions as being just hilarious, and I'd love to be able to point to some first-person accounts in response.

For instance, I keep seeing this image thrown up on various cynics journals, something that represents a trope about ineffectual responses to the Black Plague:

Nevermind the fact that they are using the image inappropriately - this is an image that represents a culture desperate to escape a really, actually horrible plague, and now it has been turned around to represent media over-blownness.

I've seen what you're talking about. When people refuse to take reality seriously they probably have nothing to say that you need to hear. Stop networking with idiots. Put some distance between yourself and the people who think slow death is funny, because those people are typically excellent disease vectors. No one here seems to be panicking, but we're not mocking events either.

@Stygmata:Oddly that image is key to the current storyline in Hellblazer, which is about the building of the 2012 Olympic stadium on London's plague pits...And yeah - black humour is one thing but the general response of the aforementioned blog-fuckwittery is vile.

I'm more worried about the political ramifications of the flu outbreak. The only thing that provides a better opportunity for seizure of power than a bombing or natural disaster is an epidemic. I hope that the US can quash it and then provide aid to Mexico, thus avoiding the opening that the nationalist right-wingers are no doubt waiting for.

The US racist/nationalist right-wing already has militias patrolling the US-Mexican border. And they've also already played the public health and safety card multiple times. This will get a lot of play in the blogs, but won't make much difference in their attitudes or behaviours.

Regarding your profile picture - In 2000 I wore an outfit like that as my halloween costume and told everyone I was a terrorist. In 2001 I wasn't invited to any halloween parties.